Read all about it here.
Whoops, maybe not. What happened?
Well then, read all about it here, below.
Poor Sandra! Poor Kristy!
[UPDATE, APRIL 30, 2013: Pulled. Come back May 1 for details, if you want.]
[UPDATE, May 1, 2013: Oh, you're back! Well, you know, the same basic info has been posted here by SideCar and it pays off on the headline of cars getting impounded. So I guess that's that, for now. Thank you, drive through,]
I’m not finished yet.
Look at this official Bay Area Air Quality Management District staff car. What powers it? Gasoline. Evil, evil gasoline.
Now let’s leave aside the half-assed parking job directly in front of the latest Polk Great Streets Complete Streets “Improvement” Meeting. Oh wait, let’s not. Parallel parking involves being parallel, right? Work on that, BAAQMD. And should you have left your ass hanging over the official SFMTA red zone? Have you no respect for The Law, BAAQMD?
Hey BAAQMD, where’d you come from to get to the corner of Bush and Polk? Tell me and I’ll then tell you which crappy SFMTA bus line you all could have used to get to the meeting. I myself came up Sutter from the office ’cause it’s relatively flat. See? I’m loaded with info!
Conveniently using one of the many parking spaces it wants to eliminate in the Polk Corridor. Let’s call this shot The High Cost of Free Parking:
Click to expand
Hey BAAQMD! Do you pay the meters when you park you gasoline-powered cars about town on the weekends? I think we had a big deal about this issue just last year, right? Oh no, you just leave the meter flashing EXPIRED EXPIRED while you tend to your bidness for hours? OK fine.
Oh well.
The BAAQMD isn’t an Air Quality Management program, it’s a jobs program.
It’s a jobs program for the people who work for … the BAAQMD.
Just saying.
OMG, would you look at this?
I mean check out all these deadly, beastly automobiles parked on Polk, the very same street that the SFMTA is trying to “complete” don’t you know:
Click to expand
I know, why don’t you take out all these spaces and replace them with a separated bike lane or something, SFMTA?
After all, Transit First, right?
Oh, what’s that? These are the spaces that the Board of Supervisors and their aides park in for free every day so that’s where you just happened to end your campaign of completion?
But don’t you care about safety, SFMTA?
Mmmmm….
“This project seeks to implement aesthetic and safety improvements for all users of Polk Street between McAllister and Union Streets. In accordance with the City’s Transit First policy, improvements will primarily be focused on people who walk, use transit and ride a bicycle along Polk Street. The project is funded by Proposition B General Obligation Bonds and is part of an overall citywide effort to curb pedestrian and bicycle collisions and to provide a safe north-south connection for people on bicycles. Pedestrian and bicyclist collision and injury data on Polk Street point to a corridor in need of safety improvements for all those who share the road. In fact, the southern portion from Sacramento to McAllister Streets is part of the 5% of San Francisco streets that have more than half of the City’s most severe pedestrian collisions.”
Organizing people to support whatever the SFMTA wants to do? Yes.
Now, does the SFMTA give lots of money to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition?
So what does all that money buy?
The SFMTA has just announced it will be holding the third official Polk Street Improvement project meeting series on Saturday, April 27 from 10 am to 1 pm and Tuesday, April 30 from 5 to 8:30 pm at 1300 Polk St (at Bush) at the First Congregational Church Fellowship Hall. Please take a moment to read what’s at stake at these meetings. For a year, the SFMTA has conducted widespread community outreach and has developed proposals that will address the urgent safety needs on Polk Street (where once a month someone on a bicycle AND walking is involved in a collision).
If you support safety improvements to Polk Street, it is critical that you attend one or both of these SFMTA Community meetings on April 27 or 30 and speak up for the improvements proven to make biking and walking safer and bring more people to a commercial corridor.
RSVP below so we know that we can count on you to come to the April 27 or 30 SFMTA Community meetings to speak up for safety on Polk Street:
Polk Street Meetings RSVP
Now, could the SFMTA drum up support directly?
I don’t think so. BART, for instance, got in trouble for doing this type of stuff.
But what’s the difference if the SFBC functions as an arm of the SFMTA?
Hey SFMTA, what’s sample bias? Is it this?
“The SFMTA is looking to get input on how the proposed options for Polk Street meet your needs when you’re traveling on Polk Street. Click here to take SFMTA’s survey. and speak up for safety improvements that matter most.”
I think so. Let me Google that for you.
And actually, all the polling you do has sampling bias. Did you know that, SFMTA?
Maybe you don’t:
“Officials seemed taken aback by the anger at the Middle Polk Neighborhood Assn. gathering. Every seat in the Old First Presbyterian Church’s community room was filled. The crowd stood several deep along the walls and spilled out into the corridor.Audience members jeered when Edward D. Reiskin, the city’s transportation director, couldn’t say how many of the 320 curbside parking spots along Polk could be taken out under the plan. “I don’t have that data,” he said to loud boos, before going with “something like 170″ maximum. The response from the crowd was more of the same.”
All right, SFMTASFBC. Enjoy your staged meetings on April 27th and 30th!
This is from back in 2008, when the Central Subway project was projected to carry 100,000 riders per day and spin off cash for the SFMTA to use to fund the rest of MUNI:
“Nevius: Chinatown subway plan makes me wince”
“There’s really only one question to ask about the proposal to bore a light-rail subway deep under the heart of downtown San Francisco. You’re kidding, right?“
“Just the initial math makes your head hurt. Basically it works out to somewhere between $1.22 billion and $1.4 billion for an underground railway that runs for less than two miles and has only three stops. That’s not a transit system, it’s a model railroad.“
“Throw in a few of the inevitable cost overruns and this could work out to a billion dollars a mile.”
“No matter. This is the kind of big, splashy project that city officials love to put their name on.”
“Basically, the argument seems to boil down to this - we’ve got the money (as if federal tax dollars grow on trees), the Chinatown community is behind it, why not build it? Oh, let me count some of the reasons.”
“But, critics say, a stop on Market beneath which BART and other Muni lines already run might have made this whole thing an easier sell. That would have created an opportunity for a single station where riders could make connections between regional and local trains, almost like Grand Central Terminal in New York. Instead,riders will have to walk all the way up to Union Square.”
“Oh, and did I mention that in order to get under the BART tube, the subway station at Union Square will have to be at least 95 feet below the surface. That’s nine stories.”
“What is it about that image of deep, underground dirt-munching machines in earthquake country that makes me wince?”
And this is from 2013, after the projected ridership has plunged to about 30,00 per day and its obvious that this subway is going to be a massive annual drain on MUNI’s operating budget:
“The hole in subway opponents’ arguments
I believe the vast majority of the city would love to have a north-south subway that extended from SoMa to Fisherman’s Wharf.
There has never been a city that has regretted building a subway. It’s a great system of transit, it gets people off the street and underground, and it doesn’t experience delays like buses.
What they don’t like is constructing a subway. It’s messy, dirty and noisy. But the result is worth it. Suck it up.”
Oh well…
Thusly:
Click to expand
At first I was thinking…Easter?
And then I thought Boston Marathon.
And then I realized it was for the GSW.
Is it a little cheesy to do this so far ahead of time?
Yep, IMO.
Oakland doesn’t have much, you know.
They were going to get a pair of pandas from China, but that didn’t work out.
Oh well.
That’s Venus, the Evening Star, to the right of the dome, BTW.
And that’s a #5 Fulton hover bus heading inbound on McAllister…
My most incoherent headline yet.
This was the question back in 2011.
And this was the answer.
Comes now The Tens with his take on photographer-model duality:
Via The Tens – click to expand
Here’s what happened on Central “Avenue” near Fell Street in the Western Addition NoPA all the way back in 2010.
And here’s the same block today, below.
So, somebody painted these parking T’s where there were none before and then somebody else came along three months later to blank them out with black paint and then, over the years, the black paint wore out leaving the still-visible, commercial-grade white T’s.
Click to expand
Why would the DPW / SFMTA do this?
To see how parkers would react?
To put in meters?
I don’t know.
Courage.
Uh, what’s this?
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.”
Click to expand
Did Maya Angelou pay for this? That would make sense, I guess.
Or did someone else? You know, to increase love awareness?
Or maybe the pathetic SFMTA paid for this, so some people won’t hate it as much in the future, you know, to improve its image?
If so, did the SFMTA pay Maya Angelou for her quote or did it just rip her off? I mean, maybe she doesn’t even like the SFMTA.
And what about this – at the bottom of the ad it’s all:
So make up your mind, SFMTA. I mean, does love recognize barriers or not?
And do YOUR PASSENGERS arrive at their destinations ”full of hope?”
In closing, MUNI sucks.
All right, first of all, if you want CW Nevius to Block you from his Twitter feed, start up a crappy WordPress blog and call him one of the following:
“SHARP-AS-A-MARBLE, EX-JOCK, EVERYMAN NEWS COLUMNIST/QUASI SPORTSWRITER” or a
“BROWN-NOSING, OBSEQUIOUS KISS-ASS LICKSPITTLE TOADIE”
That’s what did it, one or the other, I figure.
So now I’m banned, for life, from the Twitterings of the The Neve.
Oh well.
Anyway, here’s what the Nevinator has to say today about the Central Subway boondoggle.
See? It doesn’t seem that the Nevemeister opposes the wasteful Subway to Nowhere.
But he does! Check it:
“Nevius: Chinatown subway plan makes me wince”
“There’s really only one question to ask about the proposal to bore a light-rail subway deep under the heart of downtown San Francisco. You’re kidding, right?“
“Just the initial math makes your head hurt. Basically it works out to somewhere between $1.22 billion and $1.4 billion for an underground railway that runs for less than two miles and has only three stops. That’s not a transit system, it’s a model railroad.“
“Throw in a few of the inevitable cost overruns and this could work out to a billion dollars a mile.”
“No matter. This is the kind of big, splashy project that city officials love to put their name on.”
“Basically, the argument seems to boil down to this - we’ve got the money (as if federal tax dollars grow on trees), the Chinatown community is behind it, why not build it? Oh, let me count some of the reasons.”
“But, critics say, a stop on Market beneath which BART and other Muni lines already run might have made this whole thing an easier sell. That would have created an opportunity for a single station where riders could make connections between regional and local trains, almost like Grand Central Terminal in New York. Instead, riders will have to walk all the way up to Union Square.”
“Oh, and did I mention that in order to get under the BART tube, the subway station at Union Square will have to be at least 95 feet below the surface. That’s nine stories.”
“What is it about that image of deep, underground dirt-munching machines in earthquake country that makes me wince?”
Of course that was from a half-decade back, but it shows how he actually felt about this boondoggly boondoggle, about Big Dig West.
I mean, the Central Subway proposal hasn’t gotten better the past five years, has it? Five years ago, the promise was that it would “make money” for MUNI, that it would subsidize other parts of the system by generating a surplus. But now we know that it will burden the SFMTA and the current projections for the number of riders per day is down dramatically from what people were promising back then.
So what’s a matter Neve? Why don’t you write things like this anymore? Cat got your tongue?
Pak got your tongue?
The Old Nevius wasn’t afraid to be labeled a racist who’s against “transit justice.”
The Old Nevius wasn’t so monomaniacally dedicated to write source greasers every chance he got.
Oh well.
